


Minseok: Nementia

by TriggeredKpop



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Diary, Gen, Illness, Journal, POV First Person, invisible illness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 10:04:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10717251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriggeredKpop/pseuds/TriggeredKpop
Summary: Nementia: n. the post-distraction effort to recall the reason why you’re feeling particularly anxious or angry or excited, in which you retrace your sequence of thoughts like a kid wandering across the neighborhood gathering the string of a downed kite, which was likely lost in a romantic storm or devoured by that huge carnivorous tree that is Things Your Parents Have Said.





	Minseok: Nementia

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Min Yoongi: Nementia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10705548) by [TriggeredKpop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriggeredKpop/pseuds/TriggeredKpop). 



> The setting is Minseok contemplating his life, penning pivotal moments. You'll understand why later.  
> This is slighter longer/different than the Min Yoongi version.

****

**•April 23, 2017•**

It started age 3. I guess I was a happy child, not sure. Hard to think back and remember it all, the years that have passed until now. Maybe there were happy moments. I guess every child has a least some. Moments where the sun feels warmer, the sky brighter, bluer, soft like a dream. Momentary lapses in between bad dreams and nightmares.

I guess I was a happy child in a bad dream.

**Age 3, Illness and Surgery**

I've blocked out most of my early life, it seems. Hyung asks "Do you remember...?" and I don't. I never do. Motivated forgetting from some form of post traumatic stress disorder probably. I think I've dissociated from bad memories and in the process forgot the good ones too. Is that possible? Some sort of psychological, unconscious act of repression? Maybe. I don't know.

Have you ever noticed the night's glow is both too intense AND overcast when you're down? And it doesn't matter the cycle of the moon or how many stars are visible or the amount of light pollution. Like someone's directing your life and they have to make everything (colors, tones, ambiance, all of it) just right or you'll lose the feeling and be whole again? Sometimes I imagine a demi-god playing with my life, like strings on a puppet, and he thinks it's funny when I fall or when my bruises don't heal and it doesn't matter because I'm only human.

I can feel that I'm dissociating and I can't stop it, can't pull it back, can't make myself feel. There's a small pond inside yearning for wholeness, crying for happiness but the ocean rolls with the tide. The ocean is larger. The pond doesn't matter.

Age 3. Most kids don't remember specifics of that age and I'm no different. I remember my surgery, my mom crying. My mom being strong, laying beside me on the little hospital bed so I wouldn't feel so alone, sneaking me chocolate candies when the nurses weren't looking. Relatives coming to visit. A good number of them. My grandparents drove 6 hours and brought with them a stuffed dog I named "Feed Jake". Lyrics from an old song that played on the radio. Nuns from the orphanage came to visit, brought with them a small stuffed bunny that had pen markings for eyes, floppy ears, and was in the shape of a triangle. The kids from the orphanage had made them for those of us in pediatric surgery. I'll never forget it. I thought they were visiting because I was ill and needed surgery. But they were "He might not make it" visits. I guess bunnies don't need real button eyes when the child holding it won't be there long enough to notice the difference.

Everything else from that time is a blur. Even being wheeled back for surgery. I just remember waking up and stitches itching, wanting desperately to scratch but being aware that it would cause unnecessary pain. My mom's courage and stability. In retrospect, my dad wasn't there. I don't remember seeing him once. Ah, well it goes like that sometimes. I shared a room with another child. He was younger than me and had an older brother. He didn't make it. I think about him sometimes, about his family -how they're doing in their lives all these years later after such loss. I guess that's somehow a blessing, if you'll call it that. To realize I might not have been wheeled out of the hospital, to our neon luggage, and a trip home I have no memory of. My stay could have ended with the sheets pulled over.

**The other day Jongdae wrote:**

_"My friend’s mom asks me what are my hobbies and I never know what to tell her. My hobbies are breathing, feeling the temporarily sustained life force go in and out, wondering in awe at this complex combination that is me. Staring at the sky, whistling, letting silence graze over me and through me; delighting my senses in this silence. Wondering what it would be like if I were ocean, a tree, the earth. This leading to thoughts of how the earth has caretakers and those who abuse her, leading to thoughts of relationships and why people allow the same, to valuing our bodies, minds, our souls; continuing in a march to wondering how to benefit my soul and that of others. Having a desire to make the world a better place, always, wanting to hold everyone and everything with a unified unspoken language of care and undying love. My hobbies are thinking, reading words for this process. Books, quotes, thoughts. Feeling the earth beneath my feet, the hot summer sizzle across my flesh, the wind of volcano breathe down my neck and into my pores. Wondering how I can feel it all and still sometimes feel nothing, emptiness, hollow; the entire spectrum of emotions lit across me in a brilliant array of colors. These are my hobbies. And yet when asked, I say “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.” Because this isn’t something I share with everyone and not everyone would understand."_

I don't know how he does it. I never shared this with him, but I value the way his mind works, constantly in a multiverse. Deeper than any ocean I've known. He can see the beauty and pain in the world without feeling overwhelmed by either. Or if he does, he keeps it hidden. I wonder... In the past when I felt things more readily, did I feel that way? Was there more to me? Sometimes I'm not part of myself, even my name feels foreign. I'll look at it and think "Is this me? Is that my name?" I'm 27 years old. I should know what my name is and yet it feels distant to me, like I'm outside of my body looking in.

Ah age 3. I keep meaning to write something specific about it. I'm tired now.

Tired.

Tired.

I'm reminded of a quote Baekhyunnie shared me with me not too long ago. I think he found it in a book or something Jongdae told him to read. He thinks more deeply than others give him credit. It's not always video games and comical, albeit dramatic, antics. There's more depth to most of us and I see that in Baek. Maybe he prefers to make others smile and laugh because life's too short; I'll ask him about it one day.

_“I am so tired of waiting._

_Aren’t you,_

_for the world to become good_

_and beautiful and kind?_

_Let us take a knife_

_and cut the world in two —_

_and see what worms are eating at the rind.”_

_― Langston Hughes_

He said he only likes the first part and not the part about the knife or cutting the world in two. His brightness softens me. When the jagged edges of this world pierce too sharply, his presence acts as a beacon I sometimes forget I need. People say he's light personified. They say we're like night and day, sun and moon. I have no light.

Not sure what they see in me. Occasionally I'll wonder when they'll leave, both Jongdae and Baekhyun. It's a matter of when not if. Depending on my mood, I'll either be devastated or indifferent. It's as if my fate was decided and I'm damned because a normal person would feel like the stars had been ripped from the sky at the loss of such brightness, but if I'm dissociating then I won't feel anything. And I love them. They're like my brothers, maybe closer. But it's not a switch I can control.

About the quote, I see the point and think two parts aren't enough. I want to sink my hands into the world and find out what went wrong, but I sleep because even if I found out its not like I can change it. Sometimes the only thing most of us can do is breathe. And some of us can only try.

_Kim Minseok_

_4/23/2017_


End file.
